Protected's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on Jet Lag Season 17: Taiwan Rail Rush | Trailer in ~hobbies
Protected Link ParentEpisode 8 spoilers Mike and Sam spent too much time metagaming and not enough time actually... gaming! It played out much as I expected as of ep6. They got too confident in being able to possibly...Episode 8 spoilers
Mike and Sam spent too much time metagaming and not enough time actually... gaming!
It played out much as I expected as of ep6. They got too confident in being able to possibly win challenges; that is no substitute for actually controlling the stations. I hope when they play this format again Sam is more aggressive!
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Comment on What's something that you missed out on? in ~talk
Protected LinkSome people shared that they missed out on a "normal" youth, which is regrettable. I feel the opposite - that I missed out on being myself. My family were plenty permissive and always encouraging...Some people shared that they missed out on a "normal" youth, which is regrettable. I feel the opposite - that I missed out on being myself.
My family were plenty permissive and always encouraging regarding unsupervised outings and drinking (you drink from your mid-teens here) and clubbing. Very encouraging. Forceful, even. In fact, I had no choice but to go rupture my eardrums, smoke about a factory's worth of second hand tobacco and weed and spend hours in a crowd of faces I couldn't possibly recognize (prosopagnosia), unable to even strike up a conversation, one the one hand because it was too noisy, and on the other because everyone was roleplaying a hardcore alcoholic more often than not.
I hated every minute of it, but it was the mold. Everyone had to fit that mold. Nothing and no one around me ever helped me realize that you could be a different person. So I spent all those years never really pursuing my own interests or meeting people who might share those interests. This is especially problematic in Portugal, where the culture makes it extra difficult to make friends as an adult. I have friends and they are good people, but it's exceedingly rare to have any interesting conversation with any of them because we are so different; we share no interests and we lead very different lives.
If I could do it all over again - and in fact, this would be my advice to any young person today - I would go abroad without thinking twice. High school abroad is a possibility for many, although I don't think I was mature enough at the start of high school for it to have been the right decision for me. What I needed at that time was to learn independence. But university, absolutely. Attending university nearby was my biggest mistake, and so what I missed out on was attending it somewhere else, maybe the UK or something (was still part of the EU at the time!) Just get out of the local framework and meet completely different people in order to broaden my worldview.
While we're on it, I would also advise a lot of young people who are like I was to not attend university right away after high school. This would have been impossible for me because, infuriatingly, we were still working on getting rid of mandatory military service at the time, so the only alternative to university was military service (which by all accounts was not a good time). Now that that's no longer a problem (at least until the far right wins an election) I recommend at least one gap year, which should be focused on employment (or volunteering) and - if possible - travel. This ties back to what I wrote in the other recent thread about higher education. I think my first real "employment" (not my first job; you know what I mean) helped me gain a lot of confidence. Everyone should have that experience as early as possible.
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Comment on Why so many people are going "no contact" with their parents in ~life
Protected Link ParentAkir wrote: From my personal experience, some people will just never, ever take this step. They lack the empathy required to understand that their own worldview isn't absolute and that their...Akir wrote:
parents and family members who want to fix things need to work on themselves in order to reconcile
From my personal experience, some people will just never, ever take this step. They lack the empathy required to understand that their own worldview isn't absolute and that their children are also people with their own thoughts and perspectives. Since their perspective is the only one that matters, there's no need for them to self-examine - they only ever judge others.
Your child is his own person, and his perspective (after he grows up) isn't something you can control, so I don't think you can ever be absolutely sure he won't end up misunderstanding you. But as long as you're willing to try to see his point of view, including how he perceives you, and make an effort to meet him half-way, I honestly think you'll do great.
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Comment on Valve has released CAD files for the Steam Controller in ~games
Protected Link ParentMeanwhile, on the orange website: "But they're destroying videogames with their evil 30% share!" (paraphrased) I'm not defending or disparaging Valve's cut - I don't know nearly enough about the...Meanwhile, on the orange website: "But they're destroying videogames with their evil 30% share!" (paraphrased)
I'm not defending or disparaging Valve's cut - I don't know nearly enough about the finances of videogame production to have an opinion - but it's so endearingly naive when people seem to be arguing that the vast majority of studios would be better off without what Valve brings to the table...
Even just by existing - even if a studio or publisher doesn't deal with them at all - Valve is preventing a great deal of enshittification or (see the mobile market) races to the bottom.
(Also, to a smaller degree: "How dare they demand less from higher volume games?" I have no words...)
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Protected Link ParentThat's a whole bunch of interesting seeming games I don't know about, thanks for writing all that. The time it took you seems to be in line with my predictions when it took me 90 hours of being...That's a whole bunch of interesting seeming games I don't know about, thanks for writing all that.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
The time it took you seems to be in line with my predictions when it took me 90 hours of being very efficient. I'm glad to see more people who enjoyed the game. Personally I've become convinced these people are just bad at doing proper endings; I'm fully expecting them to mess up the third one somehow.
Regarding Vincent: Since it's looking like the third game will be played in the context of a greater focus on war (against Wutai to be precise) I'm wondering if we'll get more development for him (and Cid) during that game.
I loved chocobo races but reeeally couldn't get into the piano minigame. I typically enjoy rhythm games, but that control scheme just didn't work for me...
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Protected Link ParentHey! Batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter SWING!Hey! Batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter SWING!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Protected LinkI've played Call of the Sea. It's a problem solving game in which you play Nora, an early 20th century american who travels alone to a polynesian island in search for her missing husband Harry,...I've played Call of the Sea. It's a problem solving game in which you play Nora, an early 20th century american who travels alone to a polynesian island in search for her missing husband Harry, who vanished on an expedition meant to find a cure for a disease afflicting Nora herself. There, she finds remains of the expedition that preceded her as well as ruins left behind by a cult of eldritch fish god worshipers.
The island is full of puzzle elements as well as plenty of writings and sketches that you can use to piece together what happened to the others. Nora keeps a nice handwritten journal with drawings and notes on puzzle elements that's filled in as you examine/encounter things. I quite liked it! The sets all look pretty decent too. There is some voice acting (including well-known industry names). These aspects of the game approximate it to Myst and other such games.
However, compared to that genre, this game is more confined by a linear narrative. Explorable areas are small and only accessible in order as the story progresses. Puzzles aren't all that basic (ie not all the garbage horror game "here's the safe code, right next to the safe") but they are still simpler than a fan of the more complex puzzle solving games would prefer, and the narrow scope of each area means the challenge is a little lacking. Most areas have a vaguely cartoonish/colorful/"styrofoam prop" aesthetic that doesn't quite fit the supposed Lovecraftian theme. As such, I liked the dark and stormy shipwreck area best, and wish the whole game had had that kind of mood.
Finally, the game was quite short. It's fully solvable in about 6 hours. I guess it doesn't overstay its welcome! Overall I'd say it was a decent game, a bit lacking but perhaps perfect for puzzle solving game beginners who don't want anything too challenging.
I've also been playing Escape from Ever After, a much longer game. This is a fantastic narrative RPG with an aesthetic that (I'm told) is reminiscent of Super Mario RPG (turn-based combat) and Paper Mario games (2D characters on 3D sets) alike. I also feel some A Hat In Time vibes from the goofy humor, although there's only limited platforming. Maybe another good reference for those who played it is South Park: The Stick of Truth, which combines similar elements.
You play as Flynt, a good-natured fairytale protagonist tasked with defeating a dragon. When he reaches the dragon's castle, however, he finds that it has been taken over by Ever After Inc, an evil real world corporation hell-bent on monetizing every fairy tale. Flynt has to join forces with the dragon (and, later, other not-quite-villains) and attempt to take out a much greater foe: Capitalism! In the course of the game, you go inside several storybooks and meet many familiar fictional characters, some of which will help you, others which must be fought. All the stories have a twist on the originals.
Party members all come with their own unique environment-traversal skill, as well as a distinct set of abilities that makes them useful in combat against specific parties of enemies. You can only use two characters at a time, but you can swap party members mid-combat, so a lot of the strategy has to do with picking the best fighters to deal with any status effects, shields, enemies stacked on top of each other Vincent Adultman style and various other shenanigans. Add to that synchronized moves, items and timing-based parries and you get a combat system that, while deceptively simple, turns each fight into a short puzzle unlocked by making the right choices and using resources wisely during the fight (or you can always grind a little, I guess, but you shouldn't have to!)
Gear is all equipped on a common pool of slots ("trinket points") and some has party-wide effects (mana is shared, for example). This is nice in a way, but also means gear can have a disproportionate impact on certain fights and that the difficulty curve may not always be injective, if you know what I mean. Despite the hub-and-spokes level graph, and the fact that new levels are unlocked one at a time, gear acquisition can be fairly non-linear. I'm well into the game and so far I only found a single boss annoying (before I found the right gear for fighting him), so I'd say this isn't too much of a problem.
In all, I'm having fun playing this. I like the characters, who are fairly distinctive, despite their sometimes being pushovers, and finding the various secrets and items. It's not a super demanding game as long as you don't have too much trouble timing the parries. Other than your party member's hilariously terrible pathfinding (which doesn't matter, as they teleport to you when you need their ability), the game is very polished. I'm looking forward to finding out what other storybooks I'll be visiting!
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Comment on Gothenburg promised to optimise school admissions with a piece of code. The resulting chaos showed how unaccountable systems are ruining lives. in ~tech
Protected Link ParentIt follows naturally. What has been the main role of the enterprise in a modern capitalist society? To abstract responsibility. It's great for profits! Every single person employed by the entity...It follows naturally. What has been the main role of the enterprise in a modern capitalist society? To abstract responsibility. It's great for profits! Every single person employed by the entity can disclaim responsibility for any unethical shit - they're following established processes and orders. Nothing a company does can be attributed to anyone* , so even if the company is halted by a legal process, no one is truly held accountable. Ownership might be, but who owns a big company on the stock market, really? Answer: It's you and I. Our pension funds. Our soverign funds. Our ETFs. Everyone is responsible, so no one is responsible. The profit machine grinds ever onwards, the people at the top extract more value and for everyone else, the misery compounds. No wonder companies like AI so much.
* Different countries and legal frameworks have different processes through which people can be held responsible under certain circumstances, but enforcement is tipically difficult and inevitably selective. My generally applicable argument about the role of the enterprise is my own and you may have a different perspective.
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Comment on In the foothills of Mount Fuji, the fight is on against unruly tourists (gifted link) in ~travel
Protected LinkI live in a popular tourist destination and if I had the power to do so I would definitely strictly limit/reduce the number of visitors and tourist-adjacent businesses. I know it's pretty and all,...I live in a popular tourist destination and if I had the power to do so I would definitely strictly limit/reduce the number of visitors and tourist-adjacent businesses. I know it's pretty and all, but it's not a theme park. It's my town. I grew up here, and I shouldn't have to avoid it or be chased out of it just because every street is clogged with tourist transportation driving dangerously and clueless people taking pictures in the middle of the road. We've had serious issues with people carving their names on ancient walls or the huge granite boulders that dot the area, and multiple azulejo tile thefts. Politicians have been complicit in chasing profit above all, publicly disdaining organized pushback from the locals. In fact, if Mayor Shigeru Horiuchi is looking for another position after he's done with Fujiyoshida, he seems way better than anyone we've ever had...
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Comment on What is your favorite dinosaur? in ~talk
Protected Link ParentI can't believe you beat me to this joke.I can't believe you beat me to this joke.
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Comment on Linux privilege escalation (CVE-2026-31431) in ~comp
Protected Link ParentI think modprobe algif_aead should reliably return 1 if the module can't be loaded?I think modprobe algif_aead should reliably return 1 if the module can't be loaded?
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Protected LinkAfter eight months, 137 hours of Cruel and Unusual Puzzle Solving (as measured by Steam - includes a non-negligible amount of pause and discussion time), I believe 110 runs/days, a dozen...After eight months, 137 hours of Cruel and Unusual Puzzle Solving (as measured by Steam - includes a non-negligible amount of pause and discussion time), I believe 110 runs/days, a dozen spreadsheets, hundreds (more than a thousand?) of screenshots and a whole Notion wiki...
My friends and I have finally finished Blue Prince today!
And I don't just mean reaching Room 46 - that was just getting started. We have accomplished the following:
Pretty extreme spoilers for Blue Prince
- Obtained the Crown of the Blue Prince;
- Collected every Red Letter available;
- Obtained every non-challenge trophy (not going for extra-save runs was a deliberate choice);
- Found all Sanctum Keys, assembled every Crest and obtained Herbert Sinclair's testament and deed to Mount Holly;
- Obtained the Royal Scepter and Reclaimed the Throne;
- Solved A New Clue, restored the satellite connection to SYNKA, unblocked the tunnel under the house and reached the final Parlor;
- Found and solved the Atelier/Rough Draft and obtained Baroness Auravei's testament and true deed to Mount Holly.
This game was awesome and an incredible value for what it cost (plus they keep making bundles with other cool games - it's currently being sold in a bundle with ANIMAL WELL, Outer Wilds, TUNIC and FEZ, all of which I recommend). I'm happy to answer questions if people have any. It makes me a little sad that the game's popularity will always suffer from it not being "for everyone" due to how it does require quite a bit of patience to truly "get", not the point of it, but how to make the game dance to your tune. By the time you finish, there are a myriad different ways to manipulate the game's RNG aspects, and even when there aren't, it becomes second nature to know it's time to change tacks (or tactics at least) for the duration of a run. Even by the time we were done I don't think we had more than a dozen unproductive runs in total!
Another point of friction is the game's lack of in-game organization/note-taking. This is very much the Myst in the 90s experience - and not everyone is set up to comfortably wrangle five binders' worth of information. It's easier if you're playing on a desktop computer (or at least have one nearby) and have at least two monitors. Playing with copilots also helps! I'd love to play more games made by these authors in the future, but I hope they consider including data organization features. Outer Wilds did this very well, and even later Myst games at least had an in-game camera.
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Comment on Jet Lag Season 17: Taiwan Rail Rush | Trailer in ~hobbies
Protected Link ParentIs it, though? Spoilers up to ep6 Ben and Adam have been ahead in station count pretty much the whole season. Far ahead, as of episode 6. Also, they made a conscious choice to push for high risk...Is it, though?
Spoilers up to ep6
Ben and Adam have been ahead in station count pretty much the whole season. Far ahead, as of episode 6. Also, they made a conscious choice to push for high risk high reward bets in variable challenges, which paid off for them until it didn't. Their failure to break through to the north was due solely to a single unit mistake.
Sam and Downey were more conservative with their bets and as a result they had more predictable outcomes, but the drawback is they left chips on the table which prevented them from taking a lot of stations early. Especially since they had to keep scrambling back and forth across their territory to react to Ben and Adam's moves and challenge positioning (without actually getting those coveted Taipei challenges as of this moment).
As a software developer I think I might improve the formula by creating a better algorithm for generating new challenge positioning that biases the result taking into account current player positioning and existing challenge positioning, among other things. But even without such an improvement it has felt to me so far that things could go either way. I think I could improve the game because I'm a big game balance enthusiast, but almost every season of Jet Lag seems to have a huge RNG component (not to mention natural catastrophe interference, such as Deutsche Bahn!)
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Comment on The Dear Hunter - Sunya (2026) in ~music
Protected Link ParentWatched it immediately! And I love the result. Maybe here's a cover I like more than the original... They should put out that full version they talked about.Watched it immediately! And I love the result. Maybe here's a cover I like more than the original...
They should put out that full version they talked about.
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Comment on Tildes Survey #1: How old are you? (Results) in ~talk
Protected Link ParentHah, likewise. It doesn't hurt that I wasn't super healthy during most of my twenties, so my net physical health is probably higher now (excluding of course the times when I am actually sick,...Hah, likewise. It doesn't hurt that I wasn't super healthy during most of my twenties, so my net physical health is probably higher now (excluding of course the times when I am actually sick, which hit harder).
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Comment on New Steam Controller reportedly $99 in ~games
Protected LinkIndex controllers have never cost less than €150 (each, and you need two), so I find this quite reasonable considering Valve's history and the associated economies of scale. They typically don't...Index controllers have never cost less than €150 (each, and you need two), so I find this quite reasonable considering Valve's history and the associated economies of scale. They typically don't lower prices but I imagine they could if the controller is wildly more successful than they expect.
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Comment on Your favourite karaoke songs? in ~music
Protected Link ParentTenacious D is a whole mood. With the right group, the Pick of Destiny soundtrack can be a lot of fun. Surprisingly many millennials know it well enough to sing it.Tenacious D is a whole mood. With the right group, the Pick of Destiny soundtrack can be a lot of fun. Surprisingly many millennials know it well enough to sing it.
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Comment on Is there a FLAC equivalent for digital comics? in ~comics
Protected (edited )Link ParentLet me piggyback here just to advise: Always use .cbz (zip) and never one of the other formats for the container, even if they can shave off a few bytes. zip is supported in pretty much every...- Exemplary
Let me piggyback here just to advise:
Always use .cbz (zip) and never one of the other formats for the container, even if they can shave off a few bytes.
zip is supported in pretty much every platform under the sun. There's an order of magnitude more tooling and it's typically all free to use, making new implementations easier to test (contrast with .rar/.cbr whose creation uses a closed and proprietary tool). Your archives will be much more portable.
And most importantly, .zip decompression is very performant. You may want to read your comics in a platform with relatively low hardware resources, or in a browser. There, using .cbz instead of, say, .cb7 can make a significant difference.
Recently someone was having trouble loading a >500mb cbr using Emby and I had to explain to them that the upstream dependency we use that decompresses .rar (embedded libarchive) doesn't support file by file decompression, so opening such an archive requires a considerable amount of RAM. Not so for zip.js!
If you want to optimize for size, always do it on the pages, not the container!
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Comment on Your favourite karaoke songs? in ~music
Protected Link ParentIf you'll actually be searching for karaoke videos, Karaoke Nerds has a database with "everything" (excluding some more casual or domain-specific creations). The search here works much better than...If you'll actually be searching for karaoke videos, Karaoke Nerds has a database with "everything" (excluding some more casual or domain-specific creations). The search here works much better than Youtube's incomprehensible search results. A little planet icon next to a result denotes a video that can be viewed online (click for link), the little down arrow icon denotes the video can be downloaded, and a little checkmark indicates a high quality/reliability creator from the youtube community. Keep in mind Karafun videos are all listed as "Karaoke Version".
I thought the plot was quite good, as in, they did an excellent job staying mostly faithful to the older story (in both of the new games) while greatly expanding the depth of the various characters and adding a lot of new, consistent world building. Everything looks great and the voice acting and music are excellent.
It's the endings that are controversial to say the least. But you can at least enjoy the other 95% of the games before getting to them.
Yes, Rebirth is very long. Play on easy to make the fights faster if you're concerned about duration.